Thursday, January 12, 2017

Literary Excursions with Kerry

Greetings to all friends and poets. This year I would like to give more focus to the skill of using literary devices , with particular interest in those developed during the modern and post-modern time-frame.

Portrait of Rainer Maria Rilke
Maler Helmut Westhoff


Today my focus falls on Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1929), whose work enjoys lasting popularity. Rilke was unique in his efforts to expand the realm of poetry through new uses of syntax and imagery and in the philosophy that his poems explored. With regard to the former, W. H. Auden declared in New Republic,"Rilke's most immediate and obvious influence has been upon diction and imagery." Rilke expressed ideas with "physical rather than intellectual symbols. While Shakespeare, for example, thought of the non-human world in terms of the human, Rilke thinks of the human in terms of the non-human, of what he calls Things (Dinge)." Read more about the poet at the following SOURCE. Further reading HERE.

I have included two extracts from his work by way of example:

from I Am Much Too Alone In This World, Yet Not Alone

I want my conscience to be
true before you;
want to describe myself like a picture I observed
for a long time, one close up,
like a new word I learned and embraced,
like the everday jug,
like my mother’s face,
like a ship that carried me along
through the deadliest storm.

and from Archaic Torso of Apollo

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
gleams in all its power.

Read more of his poems HERE.


The Familiar Objects
Rene Magritte (1928)


OUR CHALLENGE: Write a poem on a subject of your choice, not to emulate the writing style of Rilke, but to include diction and imagery which portrays humans in terms of the non-human within the style of your own work.




10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh goody.

Maude Lynn said...

I have no idea if I even came close.

brudberg said...

Wonderful prompt... I will see if I can add something tomorrow... if not I will try for the Tuesday Platform

Sanaa Rizvi said...

Hey everyone,

Hope you're having an amazing day so far ❤️ sharing my poem "Veil me (not)" thank you Kerry for the awe-inspiring prompt; this one's for you!!❤️


Lots of love,
Sanaa

grapeling said...

Me either, MZ, but what the hey. I knew Brendan would come through.. ~

Gillena Cox said...

How i luv this challenge, it made me bend, stretch, and do sit ups; all in my mind.
At the end of it all, i really really dont know if i rose to the challenge as was requested by Kerry

Looking forward to you C&C

much love...

Jim said...

Fun writing, Kerry. I doubt I was anywhere close to your expectations but it was fun. Now off to see how others behaved.
..

Kim M. Russell said...

I was lovely to come back to some Rilke, Kerry. When I was at school, I wrote a project about Rilke which won me a prize. I have always loved his poetry, although I tend to read it in German.

Rosemary Nissen-Wade said...

Very inspiring; thank you!

Fireblossom said...

I hope that mine is not too far off the mark. After I read angie's, i felt challenged to write something good. :-)